The vote to keep police officers in schools is looming in Minneapolis' public schools, and the school board is finding itself in a dilemma: Should it continue the district's use of school resource officers, scale them back or scrap them altogether?
With the controversial issue set to hit their agenda in July, board members heard the district's three potential scenarios at a Tuesday meeting.
Superintendent Ed Graff said the district will continue to ask for feedback from the community "to try and solicit information around these different scenarios that we have created."
Community views on police in schools run the gamut. In September, then-Minneapolis NAACP President Nekima Levy-Pounds told the board that school resource officers (SROs) come from the Minneapolis Police Department and called out police officers' "racial profiling" of minorities. Stephen Flisk, the district's deputy chief of schools, said he's heard that school principals generally support keeping school resource officers.
The district's contract with the city for the officers expires June 30, but the board won't vote on it until August, Flisk said.
Under the current contract, which the board extended in September, the 16 officers cost Minneapolis schools $1.28 million. That was bumped up by $75,000 because of a salary increase in the officers' union contract.
The bulk of Tuesday's meeting focused on data on districtwide suspensions and student viewpoints on school climate and safety. District data showed that the number of eighth-graders suspended in the first term and third quarter fell between this year and last.
Roughly half of the white students surveyed said school resource officers almost always treat students from their racial/ethnic group the same as those in other groups. Fewer students of color — nearly 40 percent of Asian, Hispanic and black students and 35 percent of American Indian students — said they felt the same way.
![Ed Graff sits in on a meeting with the turnaround leaders at Richard Green Central Park Elementary School in Minneapolis. ] LEILA NAVIDI ï leila.navidi@startribune.com BACKGROUND INFORMATION: Minneapolis Public Schools superintendent Ed Graff attends a breakfast and visits schools in his district in Minneapolis on Tuesday, February 14, 2017. The new superintendent of Minneapolis Public Schools, Ed Graff, has been on the job for more than half a year. He's come in quietly searching for ways](https://arc.stimg.co/startribunemedia/4L6VWBX5TTHEJKKVTCFCERQJI4.jpg?&w=1080)
